The Cupertino giant’s entry into the high-performance computing segment while still using ARM’s architecture at the core has totally shaken the industry and showed what it is capable of. Not sipping in a humongous amount of TDP while still giving great performance and battery life has made these new Apple SoCs even more exciting.
We thought Apple would launch its new MacBook Air this year but that is not the case because reports have emerged confirming the fact that the company will maintain an 18 months update cycle for its custom chips. So, essentially we are all waiting to see the upcoming M2 chipset in action, probably on the next MacBook Air.
Specifications Leaked So Far
As per the latest info by Commercial Times, spotted by MacRumors Apple will be upgrading its hugely popular M1 chipset, launched in October 2020, while they upgraded them with newer M1 Pro and M1 Max just a few months back. Even though we have new Apple chipsets but these are the beefier versions not the direct successor to the actual 5nm based Apple M1 SoC.
So, the upcoming M2 chipset will be a thing to look at as it looks to complete the 18-month upgrade cycle soon. Termed or say codenamed Staten, it is expected to make its debut in the first half of 2022, while its predecessor M1 chipset used TSMC’s 5nm process, the newer M2 chipset will be using TSMC’s 4nm technology.
This shall automatically help improve performance and efficiency, however, we do not exactly know which device will be the first to sport it. As rumours say it will take some time to launch the new MacBook Air, so how much accurate this leak makes us a bit sceptical, however, we might also see a redesigned Mac Mini as leaked wholeheartedly by Jon Prosser.
We cannot comment on the exact launch period of these upcoming M2 based products or the chipset itself as the launch will be impacted by the ongoing chip shortage, time to transition to mini-LEDs for upcoming MacBooks and a lot of other external factors.